Dr. Carol Swain was nominated by President George W. Bush to the National Council on the Humanities

Her six-year term will include supporting research, education, preservation and public programs in the humanities through independent grant-making agencies of the United States government.

President George W. Bush has nominated Dr. Carol M. Swain '83 to the National Council on the Humanities, the White House announced. The appointment, subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate later this month, is for a six-year term. Swain is a member of the Roanoke College Board of Trustees, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and a native of the Roanoke region.

"Dr. Swain is one of Roanoke's most distinguished graduates," Roanoke President Michael C. Maxey says. "Her scholarly work is impressive and highly significant. She will bring considerable talent and expertise to this important assignment for the good of our country."

The National Council on the Humanities is the advisory board of the National Endowment for the Humanities. NEH is an independent grant-making agency of the United States government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation and public programs in the humanities.

Swain, whose area of academic interest centers on race relations and representation, immigration and black leadership, was appointed in 2007 to the Tennessee Advisory Committee of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

A political independent, Swain teaches a course on Race, Gender and Representation in the Political Process at Vanderbilt Law School, among other classes, and directs the Veritas Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. She recently edited a book of essays called Debating Immigration, published by Cambridge University Press.

Swain is the author of several books, including The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and its edited companion Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Swain also is editor of Race Versus Class: The New Affirmative Action Debate (University Press of America, 1996), an anthology of student essays.

Swain also is the author of Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993, 1995), which was one of seven outstanding academic books of 1994 by Library Choice Journal. This publication also received the 1994 Woodrow Wilson prize for best book published in the U. S. on government, politics or international affairs and the D.B. Hardeman Prize for the best Scholarly Book on Congress (1994-1995). It was the co-winner of the V.O. Key Award for best book published on Southern politics.